From the Vaults Friday: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (1991)

The Year: 1991
The Album: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Who It Influenced: Nine Inch Nails, Yo La Tengo, Mogwai, Sigur Rós, TV on the Radio, Deerhunter, No Age

I was going to write U2 there, in that 'Who It Influenced' list, but it seemed weird. After all, when My Bloody Valentine released Loveless in 1991, they were a critically-acclaimed outfit releasing only their second album to a cult following, and Bono and co were well-and-truly ensconced in their role as the biggest-band-on-the-planet.

And yet... listening to, say, "Soon," the mammoth closing track from Loveless, you can hear a virtual blueprint for future U2 experiments: giant washes of guitar reduced to pure tone, ricocheting effects, and throbbing electronic rhythms stacked up into some stadium-sized wall-of-sound. Of course, if you don't believe one relatively-tiny Irish band could influence one colossally massive Irish band, ask your old pal David Evans.

"My Bloody Valentine were a huge influence on me during the Achtung Baby/ZOO TV period," The Edge once confessed, to Hot Press. "I suppose we'd been through our back-to-the roots incarnation on Rattle and Hum, and to discover this music which sounded so modern and abrasive was really inspiring to me; it was a totally fresh way of approaching the guitar... They were head and shoulders above a lot of what was going on at the time."

Yet, MBV's eternal greatness can't be boiled down to some sort of they-sounded-futuristic-in-'91 rationale. For, the real appeal of Loveless is that it's timeless; an album that transcends the mores of fashion, recording techniques, and nostalgia. The real reason that this album has, over the past two decades, attracted a dedicated legion of fervent followers and shameless imitators is that it sounds fresh every time you play it; revealing new depths and intricacies with every spin.

And the fact that, 18 years later, Kevin Shields has still yet to finish up a follow-up has only added to the legend of Loveless. When you achieve perfection, the reasoning goes, where to next?

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